Lessons in Free Falling
by iandyourghost
Summary: A bird at a closed window. Yamamoto hasn't been the same since his mother died. Yamagokutsuna if you skip to the last couple of lines, and then read in front of a mirror.


Reborn=not mine. Comment?

Contrary to popular belief, the Ring Battle is not the first time Yamamoto picks up a sword. His first sword training lesson happens sometime between summer and fall a good long time ago and involves an overly-excited father, a couple of wooden swords, and a nasty bump on the head. Yamamoto is not met with the instant success he had pulled off during the Ring Battle. (Mostly because he has problems with the idea of fighting without a purpose.) His mother, his kind mother, comes running out, panicked at the sound of his wailling, and shooes away Yamamoto Sr. (_"it's just a bump!" his father protests, "he's got to toughen up!" "My son doesn't have to toughen up if he doesn't have to!" she hugs Yamamoto to her more tightly and glares at her husband fiercely.)_

Yamamoto loves his mother very, very much, even though they are nothing alike. His pretty, flaxen-haired mother with her blue-green eyes and smallwarmsmooth hands, and the soft crook in her neck he liked to tuck his head against when she carried him, breathing in the smell of home.

Her mother is the one who teaches Yamamoto to make sushi, and he loves standing on his chair side-by-side with his mother, as she stirs and rolls and makes something out of everything. She could make anything great, his mother. She mixed leftovers with rice and served delicious curry, she made daisy chains out of weeds in their grass, she folded paper cranes and hung them next to his window to scare away the ghosts at night. (Yamamoto still has them, the faded, sun-bleached birds that sway in the summer breeze and cast dancing shadows on his floor.)

His father says she babies Yamamoto, and maybe she did, but Yamamoto loved his mother with everything he had. He sometimes thinks that if everything were gone, his home and his bed and his one or two friends, it would be fine if she was still with him, to hold his hand.

* * *

The following week, his mother went to bed super early, and missed the baseball she promised to watch with him and his father. The next day, she was back to normal, and read him two bed time stories to make up for the one she missed yesterday, (his favorite ones were about brave heroes and fierce dragons, and he loves when his mother reads them because she did the voices just right) but the day after that she went to sleep early again, napping all through dinner.

His father takes him to a toy store, and when Yamamoto runs up the stairs to show his mother his new model airplane, bright bright green like her favorite color, only to be met with a closed door, his father sighs, and kneels down, clasping Yamamoto's shoulders. "Your mom hasn't been feeling well these last weeks," he says. Yamamoto blinks, puzzled about the darkdeep look in his father's eyes.

"I know," he replies, "is she sick?"

"Of sorts," his father hesitates, a pained look on face.

"Well," he says, smiling, "I'll show it to her next week." Yamamoto turns and runs to the kitchen, his airplane and his father forgotten, with plans already forming in his head. Chicken soup, super thick, with onigiri filled with kimchi on the side, just how she liked it, and his mother would feel lots better. Maybe enough to see his toy today, and maybe even read him a bedtime story again (she had been falling behind, missing a lot of days, and Yamamoto's father had been supplementing stories, but it still wasn't the same)

He brings the food up to his mother, and she smiles, warm and kind like always, and thanks him, ruffling his hair, and Yamamoto is so happy about the praise that he doesn't mind when his mother pulls the blanket around herself again right after she was done, and was fast asleep before he could say anything else.

Tomorrow, he decides, clattering down the stairs. Tomorrow he would make some of his mother's favorite foods again. And then she would definitely feel better. The next day, it was shrimp tempura, the day after that sushi and red bean soup, soba, and then yakiniku. It is after Yamamoto runs out of foods to cook and has exhausted both his and his father's cooking capabilities that he realizes that his mother might not get better anytime soon.

* * *

His mother begins going to bed earlier and earlier, missing first dinner, then going to bed before she could make dinner, and waking up later and later, skimming past breakfast, barely getting up in time to pick Yamamoto up from school, then missing that, too, until Yamamoto's father takes to sleeping on the couch just to not disturb her, and the two of them become accostomed to tiptoeing around the house, careful not to wake her. Yamamoto's father starts doing all the sweeping, and Yamamoto learns to wash the dishes without cracking the plate, and how to put them in the dishwasher so everything was neat and orderly (cups on the side, upside down, big plates in the back, just like how his mother did it) Yamamoto doesn't really mind about the chores. What he missed more was walking home, hand in hand with his mother, or going out on hot cloudless summer days to stargaze in the park just around the corner. (And it occurs to Yamamoto to wonder, _will they ever do anything like that again?_)

One day, a Saturday probably about four or five months after the start of his mother's absencethatwasbutwasn't, Yamamoto and his father are sitting, side-by-side on the couch, flipping through channels, looking for a baseball game, when Yamamoto pipes up.

"Baseball was Mom's thing," he said, nothing but a statement of fact.

His father looks surprised, "yea."

Yamamoto turns to his father, "she hasn't watched in a long time."

"No," his father replies.

"She hasn't come down in a long time, actually."

"I know," His father blows out a breath, sets a heavy hand (so different from his mother's) on Yamamoto's head. "I know."

* * *

The next day, they take her to the hospital, and the doctors admit her. For a time, her mother seemed to be getting better. Yamamoto visits her every day, right after school, bringing flowers and posters to brighten up the plain white hospital walls, and she starts sitting up for his visits, smiles at him when he plunks himself down on the brightly colored blankets (he had brought them in special for his mother, sneaking them in his backpack through the hospital doors, and bribing the bemused nurses with chocolate bars to keep quiet) around his mother's feet, animatedly recounting his day, from his teacher's clothes to the school baseball team's latest victory.

"Your baseball team seems to be very good," she comments one day, out of the blue.

"They are," Yamamoto replies, "but they could be better! They don't have very many good pitchers."

"Why don't you join them?" she asks, patting his hand. "You seem to have gotten my excitement for baseball. And you could make some friends."

Yamamoto shakes his head, "Naww. I couldn't play baseball!"

He launches into another detailed story, an epic saga recounting this new kid at their school, Tsuna, or Sora, or whatever, who got picked on a lot, but Yamamoto thought had kind eyes, and maybe they could be friends?

* * *

The good days don't last too long, though. Actually, they end quickly, abruptly, something akin to ripping off a bandage, short and jarring. Some say it helps with the pain, the quick execution leaves less pieces behind, that it was kinder. Yamamoto would disagree with that point.

His mother's downward spiral starts 4 months after her release from the hospital. Sunday afternoon, she pauses while sweeping the living room and collapses onto the sofa. "Sorry," she sighs, breathless, "just a little tired." The next day after school, Yamamoto returns home to find her mother gone, and a quick note from his father. _Hospital. _Just like that, a quick left feint, a jarring right hook, and they were down again. With his backpack still on, Yamamoto turns and sprints back out the door. He dodges passing people, little children holding their mother's hands, a couple hidden under an umbrella in the park. He counts the cracks on the sidewalk on the way, imagines the world splitting apart along those lines, perfect and neat.

Bases loaded, and their star batter had struck out.

* * *

The doctor arrives, a pretty, stoic young man who was assisting the resident assigned to their mother. Not even the doctor. Yamamoto has enough heart left to be angry. _My mother is dieing_, he thinks, wonders to himself, whispers it under his breath. _My mother is dieing and you don't care? My mother is **dieing.**_

"A weak heart heart," the man begins, " The patient presented with fatigue, loss of appetite, and water retention, further tests indicated she was anemic and had severe tachycardia. Her condition had stablized with the installation of the pacemaker, but," and here he shrugs, "sometimes these things happen." The intern pulls out a pamphlet from his coat, sets in on the table next to her bed. "I would like to talk to you about organ donation. Her organs, except for her heart, are perfectly healthy, and we could desperately use her liver. " He turns around, sets the clipboard on the bed, and walks back out the door. Almost as an afterthough, like a ritual he consigned himself to, he turned around, and added a quick "I'm sorry. For your loss."

* * *

Yamamoto isn't sure what he found more depressing. That his mother was dead, or that he wasn't surprised at all. He locks himself in his mother's room for three days straight, missing the impromptu funeral his father hastily threw together. Instead, he spends his time folding his mother's clothes, the soft silk of her scarves and velvety smooth sweaters. He sleeps buried in the pile of unfolded clotes, that had, slowly as they were worn less and less, lost the smell of his mother, and nothing lingered but a ghost of dried mothballs and flowers. He packed her trinkets, her photographs, her pressed flower books, stopping only for the meals his father leaves at the doorstep. On the last day, Yamaoto runs his hands, carefully, over them, one last time, (reverently, like a farmer checking his crops before the winter frost, a priest at the altar) then, he throws them all out, the suitcases packed with her ghost, chucked them out the window, angrily, almost desperately to land in a broken heap on top of the bushes, the grass. He sleeps the next day away, curled up in a ball on the floor.

* * *

On the fourth day, Monday morning, bright and early, Yamamoto finally opens the door the whole way, kicks it open, barrels across the hall into the bathroom. He works quickly, showering fast, scrubbing the dust from under his fingernails, washing his hair. Down the stairs, and he calls out, "Morning!" and grins at his dad, whom he had startled from his sitting position at the kitchen table. "What's for breakfast?" he asks, sidestepping his father, grabbing the apron from the peg (not his mother's apron, they had replaced the ratty thing while she was in the hospital). He laughed at his father's bewildered look. "I'll make it!"

Yamamoto arrives at school, bright and early, and as he sprints through the gate, he waves to the people passing by, flashing a big grin at the principal, stopping only to pick up papers scattered by a flustered 7th year. In class that day, he moves from his former seat at the far far back to an open seat in the front. "Yo," he grins at the guy to the right, "Daisuke, right?"

The entire year 7 is teaming with gossip by the end of lunch. Yamamoto Takeshi, that former loner from Class 2-B with the sick mom, the basket case, had, _what?_

* * *

Yamamoto has never been the bright one, the happy-go-lucky quick smiling one. His mother had been. And she could make anyone at all smile, so warm, like nothing mattered but _him_. Yamamoto had never been the bright and happy one, but for his mother he would be anything.

* * *

After lunch, Yamamoto meets with the principal, and the baseball captain. After a few pitchs, and some batting demonstrations, he is put on the team. Yamamoto practices long and hard, (more determined, some would say, than he ought to be, with something like desperation in his eyes) he invites the team to sushi at his father's shop, is quickly promoted from outfield to first base. Some girls become pulled in by his upbeat grin, his slouching grace _(they notice: yamamoto takeshi is cute, isn't he?) _and for the first time, he receives chocalates on Valentine's Day.

They say, whispernotsoquiet to each other, it was a miracle, wasn't it? A death had made him well-adjusted, upbeat, popular? They whisper how well he was taking it, how he bounced back so quickly and so wonderfully.

(Yamamoto doesn't say the truth though, doesn't bother to tell anyone about the times he wakes up in the morning and forgets to remember, and he swears he can hear his mother's padding footsteps, hear her calling for him, or how he scans, always, always, scans the bleachers during a ball game, searching for a blond head, looking for her blue-green eyes. He doesn't tell them about the paper cranes at his window he refuses to take down, the times he can't sleep that can last for days turned the weeks, the way he feels sometimesalot like ripping apart his own chest, searching for the heart he had lost)

* * *

_It wasn't all bad, though. It gets better. Well, first it gets worse, then it gets better._

First, Yamamoto hurts his arm, can't play baseball, and he feels like he is suffocating, redhotfireants crawling all over him. He can't sleep that night, tosses and turns, the shadows blurring and unblurring, the throbbing in his arm drowned out by the fastbeat of his heart, _"baseball was her life," his father whispers, and Yamamoto moans in his sleep, "i know, i know, i know"_

He's not sure how he got on the roof, but he's sure of the buzzing in his ears, of the ground looming below him, _how wonderful would it be to..?_ And he seriously considers it too, until a golden brown head flashes by his view. _"What are you doing?"_ he (she?) sounded concerned. Yamamoto can't see her (his?) eyes, but he closes his eyes anyway, letting the cool summer breeze and the sound of that voice, warm like spring rain. _Mom?_

_"I can't play baseball. I hurt my hand." _He tells the voice, and he hears footsteps, light and hesitant, tap closer. A cool hand (her mother's hands were warm) rested itself on his hands for a fleeting second. _"It's okay."_

_"Baseball is my life." _He hears himself say.

_"It's okay."_

* * *

Afterwards when he hears it is Tsunayoshi Sawada who had coaxed him off the edge, he just laughs, and shakes it off. It wasn't important anymore, was it?

This, of course, does not explain the next day, when he is standing on the crossroads he _knows _that Sawada passes on his way to school, with his guard dog exchange student friend close on his heels. This, also, does not explain the way his chest loosens, the slowing of his heart, miniscule but still there, that he feels when Tsuna's brown head appears on the sidewalk.

He studies the silver-haired person stalking close on Tsuna's heels. Hayato? The way he slouches just behind Tsuna, the way he shifts ever so slightly, inches to the front of Tsuna when they reach Yamamoto, the glare he sends his way, just daring him. (it reminds him of a guard dog, of a soldier in front of his queen, desperate to defend his source of light?)

"Hi," Yamamoto grins, raising a hand, "Yamamoto Takeshi. Great to meet you!" Hayato scowls at him, ignores the proffered hand, but out of the corner of his eyes, he studies Yamamoto, too. And he understands.

_(Their hearts whisper to each other, they say "you are the same as I.")_

At lunch that day, Yamamoto apologizes to his baseball buddies. "Sorry," he tells them, sheepish, "would you mind all too much if I ate with someone else?"

Tsuna and Gokudera are waiting for him, under the oak tree. "Took you damn long enough!" Gokudera shouts out, irate. "Don't keep the tenth waiting."

"Gokudera-kun!" Tsuna places a hand on Gokudera's shoulder, "it's okay! Really!"

They had saved him a spot.

* * *

It was dark in the abandoned school, the shadows blurred close together, swirled in sync to the throbbing in his shoulder. _close_, he thinks, _any harder and i woulda broken that arm._ He doesn't feel as concerned as he should have, he thinks. The injury was just as bad as the previous one, but there was no panic, no terror? He was still scared, though; and he stands on the edge of the opening, rocking back and forth. It would be fine, if he just stopped right here. Tsuna would understand. If he stopped, he could go back, practice for the big game, bandage his hurt arm, if he went back he would be avoiding a giant risk, it would be better if he just turned around-

"YO! Baseball freak!" Gokudera calls from the bottom of the chasm, his voice tinny and echo-laced. He shakes his fist, threateningly, "Are you coming or what, you bastard! Don't you dare desert the tenth!"

"It's alright, Yamamoto-kun!" Shouts Tsuna. _It's alright._They were so small down there, in that dark place, dimmed face looking up at him from looming shadows.

Yamamoto takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and leaps.

"Sorry for making you wait," he apologizes. "I'm ready now."


End file.
